Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: The Interaction among Migration, Outcome and Social Structure

Michigan State University, East Lansing MI

Investigators

Abstract

The goal of this research is to investigate how network relationships among complex and smaller-scale societies structure, and are restructured by, migration. Prior scholarship on intercultural contacts emphasizes interaction spheres, hybridization, technological transfer, or models of exchange as measures for constructing borders and defining societal membership. Understanding and accounting for historical and relational context, on the other hand, is critical to the development of a coherent and generalizable theory of intercultural contact. Archaeology is well suited to explore the complex sociocultural formations that result from intercultural contact by capturing transformations in relationships between communities following contact. This research contributes to broader social and intellectual benefit by enhancing understanding of the impact of migration on social structure, which is an important analytical issue due to the prevalence of migration induced by war, climatic instability, economic insecurity, and social unrest in contemporary and prehistoric settings. Historical context will also be provided for understanding how and perhaps why different approaches to multicultural coexistence may lead to stable advantageous outcomes or encourage instability and conflict. This project will examine the role of network interrelationships as indicators of how both local societies and non-local migrant peoples approach intercultural social and economic relations. Through the application of a multiple relations, or multilayer, social network analysis methodology it is possible to gain insight into the various networks that connect communities to one another. It is also possible to scrutinize changes in social structure following a migration process. Andrew Upton, a doctoral student at Michigan State University will address the role of ceramic industry in the transformation of communal-scale interaction and identification networks across the Middle to Late Mississippian transition in the Late Prehistoric central Illinois River Valley. . Analysis of network models will clarify how a circa 1300 A.D. in-migration of an Oneota tribal group restructured social relationships in a Mississippian chiefly environment and how communities negotiated multicultural regional cohabitation. Laser ablation inductively couple plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) will provide clues to model networks of clay resource acquisition and exchange of cooking and serving pottery. Analysis of distributions of stylistic decorations on pots will reveal networks of categorical identification based on ascription to common social units and nonverbal communication. Technological characterization data related to pottery vessel form will elucidate shared relationships of learning and the transmission of culture through time. In providing a dynamic and multi-faceted view on social structure, this research contributes to a more nuanced understanding of social and economic transformations resulting from cultural contact.